1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to an apparatus and method for categorizing services using canonical service descriptions. More specifically, the present invention is directed to an apparatus and method for electronic business (e-business) service categorization for use with an electronic service broker in order to place e-business services into categories within taxonomies that are searchable at run time.
2. Description of Related Art
A world in which a myriad of e-business services connect and collaborate with one another over the Internet is fast becoming a reality. Business-to-business (B2B) service interactions already exist using a variety of schemes that range from very rigid point-to-point Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) interactions to open Web auctions, e.g., Ariba, Chemdex, eSteel, and eBay. Thousands of businesses have already made some of their IT services available to their customers or partners on the Web. Most of these services are intended for use from a browser. But with technology such as WIDL from webMethods (www.webmethods.com), many of the Web-enabled services can also participate in B2B collaborations.
Known e-business services collaborate without any overarching vision or architecture. Techniques for B2B collaboration vary from one case to another. As the number and type of e-business services grows, the ability of an e-business consumer to locate and contact a provider of an e-business service will become increasingly difficult. Today, there is no vendor neutral architectural mechanism for classifying e-business services such that an e-business service consumer can locate and contact a provider of a desired e-business service. Thus, it would be beneficial to have an apparatus and method for classifying services in such a manner as to make them searchable and usable at run-time.